


sleep don't visit

by wastrelwoods



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Fix-It, Gen, Inappropriate Friendly Nudity, Reunions, but until then a gay can dream!, jus a snippet of me. doing the wish fulfillment thing, my love letter to the show i mistakenly assumed this show to be...see you space cowboy, now. anything is possible. nothing is also possible maybe nothign will happen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-29
Updated: 2018-07-29
Packaged: 2019-06-17 22:09:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,352
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15471171
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wastrelwoods/pseuds/wastrelwoods
Summary: In a brighter, kinder universe, an ending is postponed for a while longer. A warm bath is taken.





	sleep don't visit

He sinks deeper into the bath water with a happy, wordless groan and shuts his eyes. The steam makes his hair curl up on the ends, wrinkles the pads of his fingers and toes in a delightful, half-familiar way. His tail twitches through the water, slow and heavy, and on a whim he flicks it up to break the surface, splashing water up into the air to sizzle against the heated tile floor. The corners of his mouth turn up in a smile. 

_I liked this_ , he thinks, with sudden certainty. _Before_. 

That before is the strangest thing, to him. He’s very certain that there should have been no before, that the dirt under his fingernails has been there since the very first hour of his life. That perhaps a person lived and died before him, inside this same body, and that he owes nothing to that unfortunate stranger, and yet. There are flashes. 

Perhaps it would be different, if he had any sense that the person who owned that before was anything less than a happy person, a fine person. Someone trying their best to enjoy the wide infinity of the world, make a lasting impression, and not a bad one. But the moments of familiarity that creep through the haze, like this. They make him curious, and just a little envious.

He is alone. Always, he’s been alone. But not before. 

It took some time, deciphering the note in his pocket, and a little help from a friendly merchant in trade for one of the pretty rings off his fingers. The letters dance and shift when he focuses his eyes on them, and though the basic shapes are familiar they don’t stay still long enough to form a single recognizable word. Not magic, the merchant said, though both the ink and the paper it’s scrawled on are of costly stock. Just another piece to the person he’s trying to puzzle together without a map. The note he can’t read. The cheap glass scimitar. The coat. The colorful ink marking his skin, and the scars below that. The half-healed, twisted, ugly mark across his midsection. 

The name--his name, plus a few others--and the instructions. 

For a few days, sitting in the back of the merchant’s wagon while his fingers itched for something missing from one of the pockets of the bloodstained coat draped over his grave, he had no intention of going. The expectation rankled. 

But sitting here, in the warmth and the steam, the hollow ache in his chest finally soothed for the first time since he’s drawn breath, he’s glad he took the gamble. For this, if nothing else. 

He ducks under the water, feels the soapy sting of it itch in his nostrils and eyes, blows a little stream of bubbles and watches them rush to the surface. After another few seconds the sensation grows uncomfortable, and he resurfaces to suck in a greedy breath of air, wet hair plastered to his face, dripping down his nape. One of the other patrons shifts uncomfortably away at the sight of his wide, toothy grin, and he scoffs out a quiet laugh.

From the other end of the pool, there’s a sudden loud sound, metal clattering against stone, and he glances over to see a halfling girl staring back at him with wide eyes, an upended bowl of fruit rolling over the tiles at her feet. 

There’s an uncomfortable twinge from the mass of scar tissue beneath his ribs, and the smile falters and drops from his face. The halfling’s companions are stirring now, shifting to peer in the direction of her thousand-yard stare, pinning him down where he sits. 

A handful of faces turn in his direction and freeze solid. The back of his neck prickles with a sudden chill. “Afternoon,” he chances, in a slightly raspy voice. 

One of the faces, human, round and dark with a pair of piercing eyes, seems to crumple in on itself. Next to her, a tiefling claps her hands over her mouth in a poor attempt to muffle a cry of shock. A well-built half-orc with a scarred face and half-grown tusks swears and reaches for a weapon where there is none. Another human with a towel wrapped tight around him like a shield gapes at him like a carnival sideshow, or a ghost. A pale woman built like a mountain stares for only a split second before jumping into the water with a heavy splash and making directly for him. 

“Mollymauk!” someone calls. 

His heart thuds in his chest, but his legs lock under him as if to keep him from running despite his better judgement, and the mountain woman is on him in another instant, broad arms wrapping around him and lifting him entirely, bodily, out of the pool, as easily as if he were a child. He gasps, and grabs onto her arms to steady himself, but where he expected terror there is only a rush of elation, and a sharp pang of sudden, overwhelming affection. He’s still reeling from the shock of it when he hears the name again, that name, and things begin to shift into clearer focus. 

The charm….the big woman squeezes him tight and sets him down in the water, and he sits back against the wall, head spinning, echoing the name dizzily. “The Mighty Nein,” he chokes out, and leans forward to press his forehead against her bare stomach, vision blurring. “Fuck, you lot took your time.” 

*

“We killed him,” Beauregard says, with a smug air that does nothing but make Molly annoyed and then vaguely confused about whether he ought to be annoyed or not. “That slaver asshole who took you down. I wanted to revive him just to kill him twice, thought it would only be fair, but we couldn’t find enough diamonds for both of you and getting you back...that was. More important. Obviously.”

He takes a long draught of ale, and considers this. “Shame I wasn’t there. He sounds like a real prick.” 

“You should have seen his face,” the goblin--Nott--chimes in grimly. “I did this illusion spell, made him think you were in the room too. Thought he was going to piss himself right there, but then uh. Yasha chopped his head off so he didn’t get the chance. She’s very strong.” 

“I am,” Yasha says quietly, both absolutely stoic and clearly embarrassed about it, and Molly loves her fiercely for an instant. 

“Should have brought him back anyway,” Beau grumbles. “Because we got back to your--where we--and the fuckin’ dirt was kicked up everywhere. Looked like it had been looted or something. Diamond won’t do shit without a body.” 

He doesn’t remember dying, exactly, not in names and places, but for a moment there’s something driving its way through his ribs, twisting, twisting, tearing him apart slowly and he’s snarling and spitting and glaring up into the rising darkness and--- “Is this the strongest stuff they have?” he asks, and Nott passes him her flask, wordlessly. 

They give him a moment to drink in silence, and he considers a while longer, swallows, wipes his mouth on the back of his hand, turns back to Beauregard. “Was worth it,” he announces, setting the flask down on the table with a thud. “In case you were wondering. You got away. I won.” 

She stares him down a full ten seconds, and then socks him in the face, lightning-fast. “Fuck you, Tealeaf.” 

He rubs his jaw and grins, tasting blood. 

When she storms away, she tosses at him a deck of gilded cards, foxed at the edges and stained with blood. He considers them long and hard with his head tilted to one side, and flips the card at the top of the stack between two fingers. A figure, robed, standing in an archway at the end of a path. Ten stars over their head. 

Out of curiosity he draws another. A jester with a satchel on his back, walking briskly into the unknown. 

A end and a new beginning, side by side.

**Author's Note:**

> there is,,, a different and equally self-indulgent wish fulfillment fic in the works that i discovered as i was writing this, but i didn't want to abandon it altogether in favor of rewrites, man, 'kill your darlings' is for professionals i am here to have FUN 
> 
> idk why i do the fuckin. songs like wine pairings thing every time but this goes well with UH 'welcome home son' by radical face you're welcome


End file.
